[NCLUG] Daylight Saving Time, and free unices

[Bob Proulx]

Chad Perrin wrote:
> There are several distributions of Linux that still don't provide
> patches for it.

The only one that I can think of is linux-from-scratch which is a
cheet to say it because the distro maintainer is yourself in that case
and you should provide your own critical patches. :-)

> As I mentioned in the article, there are also circumstances where
> (for one reason or another -- such as lack of broadband Internet
> access for the system in question)

But the files are small.  A couple of these would fit on the old 5.25
inch 360k floppy.

  timezone-2.3.3-98.61.i586.rpm	    346K
  tzdata_2006p-0ubuntu6.10_all.deb  306K
  tzdata-2006a-2.EL3.1.noarch.rpm   441K
  tzdata-2006a-2.EL4.noarch.rpm     440K

Running Debian Sarge falls into a problem though because back then the
timezone data files were bundled with libc.  Therefore as a full set
the libc6 should be updated.  That one is certainly bigger.  Etch will
release with the tzdata split out.

  -rw-r--r--  1 4.7M May 10  2005 libc6_2.3.2.ds1-21_i386.deb

That would be painful, but not impossible.

> simply updating patches from the distribution's central archives is
> not much of an option.

Why not?  *Why* isn't updating patches from the distributions central
archives an option?

And even if you just updated the tzdata itself out of band from the
package manager the files are very small.

  du -sh /usr/share/zoneinfo/
  5.6M    /usr/share/zoneinfo/

Why is updating a problem?

> Don't necessarily assume that everyone else's computing environment
> is identical to your own.

I don't think that I was.  In fact that was specifically the question
that I was asking.  Why wouldn't people be able to upgrade?

> Haven't you ever had a computer that wasn't on the network?

Are you suggesting that a large number of people maintain computers
off of any network and are now the cause of the mad scramble to update
the timezone information on them?  (Are you suggesting that coconuts
migrate? :-)

But have *I* ever had a computer off of any network?  In the old days
often.  These days very seldom.  But then I don't care if they know
the time either.  The hardware clock in most computers are okay but
not good.  Without a good time source they will drift terribly.  They
might easily be an hour off when DST starts.  Normally I use the
network for that time source.  But if I am keeping a computer off of
any network then the time will be all over the place.

Today I will put forward that the vast majority of computer users
think that a web browser *is* the computer and that if the network is
unavailable that the computer is not usable.

As it happens I am not one of those people.  I often run my laptop
without a network connection.  I run a real full os on it.  I keep the
source for most of my current projects on it.  I use distributed
version control ('git') to manage my data while offline.  I am
actually quite productive while unconnected from any network.

> Are you positive that every single operating system in the world,
> including every Linux distribution, has patches available for
> tzdata?

All of the ones that are still alive do, yes.  If you have a need to
run a dead system then the reason for needing that would be an
interesting thing to talk about.

Why would someone have the need to run a dead system?  There are
probably good reasons.  For some specific application or some such.  I
would guess that kiosk systems might fall into some type of catagory.
Or that a firmware device like the linksys wrt54g boxes or some such.

Hey, I already upgraded all of my HP-UX 10.20 systems.  And those have
been out of support for years.  In case anyone else is in that same
boat the file to update there is this one.

  HP-UX: /usr/lib/tztab

As far as why I am still running HP-UX 10.20 on a machine it used to
be for a very specific piece of source code that only compiled on that
machine.  But that program is now no longer significant.  Now it has
gotten to be nostalgia.  It is nice to have an old reference system to
compare the newer systems against.  I am not really sure why the other
machines were still running 10.20.  I did not ask and just updated
them anyway.

Bob